It’s holiday time and time to start thinking about the writers in your life (including yourself!).

My amazing writing group meets once a month. At our meeting this morning, one of the members surprised us with gifts. We don’t usually get each other gifts around the holidays, so it felt very special.

We all received different kinds of bookmarks. A perfect gift for a writer! As I’ve gotten older, I’ve really appreciated high quality bookmarks.

One woman in the group who loves horses received this one. It’s leather and is like mini-stirrups. Very cool!

A newer member in the group received this magnetic bookmark shaped like a cassette tape.

I and several others, in the group, received this beautiful butterfly bookmark. Each one had different strands of colored beads that seemed to fit our personalities. So lovely! We also noted that it could also be used as a hair ornament!

Her generosity prompted me to search around the web for a roundup of fun writing gifts that might make your holiday lists.

This week, I met a very special writer and activist—Gloria Steinem! On Wednesday, I was on a panel honoring 45 years of Ms. Magazine! I serve on the Ms. Scholars Board, a group that helps feminist scholars translate their ideas for a popular audience. I discovered Ms. in college through my mentor, and loved it. Ms. still represents the best in feminist journalism and has often been the first to break stories about sexual violence, the wage gap, and the feminization of poverty that changed the national discourse. I had the privilege to write a featured article for their 40th anniversary.

Gloria Steinem is a journalist, activist and co-founder of Ms. I’ve always wanted to meet her. I admire her wit, persistence, humor, insight, style and sheer brilliance. I was on the panel with her and watched her work then and after and can say she walks her talk. She’s 83, kind, forthright and unstoppable. And, she wears amazing leather pants! Later at a reception, I told her how much I admired her book Revolution from Within: A Book of Self Esteem.

It was a vulnerable book that dared to talk about the importance of feminist self-care and the importance of inner work while on the path of political activism. Despite its bestselling status, it was universally panned by critics at the time in the 90s-they just didn’t get the importance of wrestling with the inner dimensions of internalized ‘isms’ nor ruminating on the mind/body split. Ideas that are now front and center in social justice circles as well as in health circles given what we know about how trauma effects the body in complex ways.

She has never stopped being a journalist and never stopped writing her truth which I find inspiring.

She is a living treasure and I am so glad that President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for a lifetime of human rights work.

I just got back from teaching at the incredible North Carolina Writers’ Network fall conference. It was a blast. I also enjoyed supporting the conference’s first ever NaNoWriMo launch. I’ll have updates about all this and more very shortly. In the mean time, I wanted to share some upcoming local events that I’m proud to be a part of.

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Are you a fan of the science fiction writer Octavia Butler? Want to talk about Octavia Butler’s acclaimed science fiction novel Parable of the Sower? Do you want to learn more about Afrofuturism?

Come join me on Wednesday (tonight!), Nov 8 @7pm at Flyleaf Books! I will have the distinct honor of hosting a conversation about Octavia Butler and Parable of the Sower with my special guest and colleague, Dr. Lilly Nguyen! We will explore the themes in Parable of the Sower and how they engage us on critical questions of humanity’s future, race, gender and transformation. We’ll discuss how Butler’s work has propelled our own, and how it can relate to, inform, and inspire other lives.

It’s OK if you are new to Octavia Butler, read Parable a long time ago, are reading it now, or just want to come and listen!
This is part of a free event series celebrating the US premiere of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower at Carolina Performing Arts, an opera created, written, and composed by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon.

I’m super excited to be reading from Reenu-You this Saturday at the wonderful Ngozi Design Collective at 11am at 321 West Main Street, Durham. I will be joined by speculative fiction author Nicole Kurtz. We will read from our recent publications and discuss how African American female creators are reshaping the landscape of all things sci-fi, fantasy and horror in books, TV and film. Door prizes and refreshments! I’d love to see you there!

The first thing you notice in Eden Royce’s short story collection, Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, is the exquisite attention to language and setting. Royce’s storytelling is layered and dense. Spook Lights is billed as dark fiction. The sense of horror, dis-ease and dread are developed in an entertaining and unexpected way in each story. This collection is a great introduction to Southern gothic horror and is well worth your time.

Themes that recur in the stories include: betrayal, the meaning of death, the price of living, what makes a joyful life, and memory. The challenges of love, especially for women and the price that they are willing to pay for it (whether for a son or lover) is often costly. The characters in these stories yearn, love, desire and act in ways that make for compelling fiction.

This collection is populated by a variety of diverse characters and cultural reference points that include European American, African American, and indigenous histories. And, their experiences are filtered through the landscape of the South, most often Charleston. Indeed, one of the gems of Eden’s storytelling is the way she uses language, dialect, and setting to re-imagine folk traditions, hoodoo, and everyday people seeking spiritual assistance. She upends the traditional Hollywood stereotypes of root workers and conjure women. She is interested in how the magical and mundane intersect, especially for women of color and the paths that they travel to find freedom– both physical and psychological. Indeed, the title of the collection embodies a playfulness about ideas of darkness and light, and personal and official histories.

I truly enjoyed every story in this collection. Some of my favorites include, “Dr. Buzzard’s Coffin”, a fresh take on zombies, including ones that can restore balance. This tale involves an uncle undergoing a metamorphosis in order to cleanse the community of a dangerous threat. In many of the stories, the main character seeks assistance from the spirits and after receiving the assistance, realizes (often too late) that it came with a high spiritual price tag. “Hag Ride” is one of these stories. What is one to do when one loves a philandering husband? We feel for Frieda, the main character when she is warned by ‘Big Mama’, her godmother (who works roots), that sometimes we should let someone go rather than trying to force them to love us. The troubled young woman doesn’t want to hear this sage advice and proceeds to call on ‘The Hag’ for help. Her philandering husband gets more than he bargains for when he meets a beautiful woman who gives him the “ride” of his life. He is definitely transformed in ways that Freida can’t anticipate. It is a delicious revenge story with a twist at the end.

With the “Turn of a Key” and “Rhythm”, roles are reversed and it is the man that’s been betrayed and seeks help from otherworldly forces.

The stories vary in length and viewpoint, alternating between first and third person. Some like “Hand of Glory” and “Homegoing” are flash fiction driven, leaving us with more tantalizing questions than answers.

My very favorite story, “The Choking Kind”, ends the collection. I love this story because it is a mother and daughter story, a mystery and a story about magical beings all rolled into one. Imaginative and unexpected it deals with ideas of loss, memory, identity, freedom and family.

In this collection, there is a story for every kind of horror and dark fiction aficionado. Compelling short story collections are marvels of pacing, selectivity and wordsmithing. Eden Royce brings all of that and more to this work. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Besides being published by Book Smugglers Publishing, I have found that another wonderful perk has been discovering other fantastic authors in the BSP family. One of them is Dianna Gunn. In May, I discovered Diana’s novella, Keeper of the Dawn. Dianna’s was the first novella released in the Book Smugglers Novella Initiative. I loved it and also wrote a review of it. Dianna and I have many overlapping interests and I have enjoyed getting to know her work.

Dianna Gunn is a freelance writer by day and a fantasy author by night. She blogs about writing, creativity and books at http://www.thedabbler.ca.

I’m delighted to welcome Dianna Gunn to The Practice of Creativity.

– Tell us about your recent novella, Keeper of the Dawn. What are you hoping readers will connect to in this story?

Let me start by sharing the blurb:

Sometimes failure is just the beginning

All Lai has ever wanted is to become a priestess, like her mother and grandmother before her, in service to their beloved goddess. That’s before the unthinkable happens, and Lai fails the trials she has trained for her entire life. She makes the only choice she believes she can: she runs away.

From her isolated desert homeland, Lai rides north to the colder, stranger kingdom of Alanum—a land where magic, and female warriors, are not commonplace.

Here, she hears tales about a mountain city of women guardians and steel forgers, worshiping goddesses who sound very similar to Lai’s own. Determined to learn more about these women, these Keepers of the Dawn, Lai travels onward to find their temple. She is determined to make up for her past failure, and will do whatever it takes to join their sacred order.

Falling in love with another initiate was not part of the plan.

Keeper of the Dawn is a tale of new beginnings, second chances, and the endurance of hope.

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If there’s any one thing I want readers to connect with, it’s the idea that the path to success is rarely straight forward. I also hope Keeper of the Dawn will serve as a reminder that we all deserve love, even—especially—if we have to seek it outside the bounds of “normal” relationships.

-How did you get bitten by the ‘writing bug’? Did you always wish to become an author?

I always loved telling stories—I used to read to my stuffed animals—but I didn’t realize “writer” was a valid career path until JK Rowling made a lot of money. I was quickly disillusioned about making my own fortune, but I’ve never let anyone dissuade me from the idea that I can’t make it a career.

–You manage to pack a lot into your day! You’re a blogger and freelance writer, and you’re working on a non-fiction book. How do these activities support your creative work?

Being a freelance writer by day comes with its own set of challenges, but it also has special advantages. The flexibility of my schedule means that if I’m on a roll, I can work on my fiction WIP for several days, and do my freelance work at the absolute last minute.

On the other hand, if I’m struggling with my fiction, I always have something else to do.

Also, I’m writing that non-fiction book VERY SLOWLY and blogging large parts of it. Some of it is also reworked from blog posts I wrote 2-3 years ago, allowing me to write the book efficiently. Albeit still slowly, because fiction is my true love.

-In your ‘Inspirations and Influences’ essay for Book Smugglers, you mentioned that you were writing a parody novel that you eventually abandoned, but kept Lai as a character. What allowed you to abandon that project and dive deeply into Lai and build a story around her?

Hahaha, I never had a problem abandoning projects. Which might sound strange if you know that I’ve also been working on my full length novel, Moonshadow’s Guardian, for 9 years, but I have happily thrown away dozens of other manuscripts. And I always keep the notes so I can reuse ideas in new stories.

-What’s on your bookshelf, next to your bed (or in your e-reader)? What are you reading right now?

I finished reading Cog and the Steel Tower by W.E. Larson last night, so now I have to pick a new book. Which is going to be tough, because I picked up the LGBT Story Bundle a couple weeks ago and I’ve also got several print books friends loaned me…

– What’s your best writing tip that you’d like to share?

Don’t take criticism of your stories personally, and ignore anyone that uses flaws in your fiction to attack you as a person. I know it doesn’t FEEL like our books are separate from us, but they are. We should treat them that way.

When she isn’t helping her clients bring their dreams to life, Dianna can be found busily working on her own dream of being a successful fantasy author. Her first YA fantasy novella, Keeper of the Dawn, came out on April 18th, 2017. She has several other novellas and novels in the works, and hopes to announce a second release date soon.

I admit it. Growing up, I wasn’t a fan of Wonder Woman. I didn’t read DC comics and wasn’t in love with the television show. Some of this was due to the fact that my younger sister, Melissa, adored WW. And, of course, the unwritten rules are that older siblings can’t ever like what the younger ones do. It’s just not cool.

Plus, I saved all my girl crush energy for The Bionic Woman, who although is not a classic superhero, captured my imagination with her brute strength, grace, style and humor. And I enjoyed the show’s sci-fi theme. Plus, she wore real clothes while she kicked butt. I also always believed that in a fight, the Bionic Women could totally take Wonder Woman. I still have my first Bionic Woman doll, although she is missing a foot!

So, all this is to say that I was not expecting to completely fall head over heels for the new WW movie. Tim and I went to see it this week and we both really enjoyed it. As many critics have already pointed out, the film subverts some of the taken for granted superhero themes. It is a mother and daughter story, a collective empowerment story, an ensemble story and a female coming of age story, all rolled into one.

The action in the first twenty minutes of the movie is absolutely thrilling. It is thrilling to see women, strong women, stand up for what they believe in and defend themselves. Usually female viewers watching action adventure and/or superhero films have to contort themselves into identifying with the strength and perspective of the male lead characters. It was nice to not have to do that with WW. I could go again just to see the first fight scene, it is that well-choreographed! It’s not that we haven’t seen kick-ass heroines before, but WW feels different. The kick-ass heroines are usually singular, surrounded by a male team and often not the leaders of the team. And, they sometimes apologize or are ambivalent about being strong. Not the case for WW.

Diana isn’t an anti-hero, she is compassionate and becomes wise by the end of the film. Yes, she’s gorgeous (and at times I found myself wondering why all the Amazons were lacking any body hair), but the camera shots and visual cues about the actress’s body weren’t gratuitous.

Maybe WW is striking such a powerful chord in the US because as many of us believe, collectively women have recently suffered some pretty significant cultural, political and legal setbacks. Those of us fighting and advocating for gender equity need continued courage. And, of course, the fact that the film was directed by a woman is another milestone.

The Amazon theme also holds a special place in my heart as I have an anthology, titled Amazons edited by Jessica Salmonson in 1979, that a male friend gave to me in college. The writers in the collection reimagine an “amazon heritage” using some of the historical record to tell new stories. I was so inspired by this book that a few months later, I coaxed some to friends to help me make an Amazon costume for a Halloween party. That book turned me on to ‘feminist science fiction’ in college which led me to Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy, Octavia Butler, many others and then my own writing path.

I’m hopeful that with the release of WW, young girls and boys can find awe in and enthusiasm for a new superhero.

I hope someone I know will throw a Halloween party this year, so I can start working on an Amazon costume!

*this post was inspired by writer, P.K. Tyler’s Facebook post on WW.

Those are my thoughts. Have you seen the film? What’s your take on it?

Dianna L. Gunn – one of the other authors in The Novella Initiative by The Book Smugglers – is hosting me on her blog today! We chat about the inspiration behind Reenu-You, the rise of novellas, and how publishing must change to support diverse voices. https://goo.gl/zZmFmT